“What is it, Frank? Is anything wrong?”
The anxious voice of his wife came from the adjoining room as Weston hastily slipped into trousers and shoes, not bothering to put on his stockings nor fasten the laces.
“Oh, nothing much, I guess,” he answered lightly, though his nerves still jumped a little after being roused so startlingly from profound sleep. “Only a neighbor; says his name is Hodge. Probably wants to borrow something; folks out in the remote country are always running out of matches or flour or something. It’s all right; tell you all about it soon as he’s got what he wants and gone home.”
He took a pocket torch from the bureau, and snapped on its cold, white beam as he stole down the narrow stairway with its carved mahogany railing, which some misguided tenant had long ago painted white. For just an instant he hesitated at the door, before slipping the heavy iron bolt; then with a smile at his timidity, which he realized came solely from the unfamiliar isolation of one accustomed to living packed in among teeming thousands, he threw open the door. It creaked loudly in the silence; and unconsciously he stepped back a pace, his hand tightening on the metal cylinder of the torch.
The strange caller blinked as the beam played about his rugged, homely face. “I won’t step in,” he said, his voice pitched cautiously low. “And sorry to wake ye up this time o’ night. But fact is, there’s trouble afoot. I knew you and your wife just got in today; we see ye pass with Jed Hooper. Wanted to warn ye to keep doors and windows locked tight, and it might not be a bad idee to have a gun handy. Have you got one?”
“I have an automatic,” Weston admitted a little sheepishly. “Thought I might amuse myself shooting at a mark. Had it a long time, and never got a chance to fire it off in the city.”
The bearded figure nodded. “Mebbe you’ll have a real mark to shoot at. Hope not, and tain’t likely. This neighborhood is very peaceable. Everybody knows everybody else, or at least, we cal’lated we did. But I just got a telephone message; we’ve all of us got telephones, but you. That’s why I came over to warn ye. Didn’t seem right, somehow, with you two city folks sleeping like as not with the door unlocked—which nobody down here ever bothers to lock up nights—”
Weston shivered a little. The chill night air was penetrating his thin shirt and ruffling his thin hair. “But what is it all about? What did you come to warn us about, if the village is as peaceable as you say?”
The bewhiskered man coughed. “That’s what I was coming to, mister. As I was saying, I got this telephone message from the sheriff over to Allsworth. That’s the county seat. Something terrible has happened at the Bronsons’, ten miles away on the Cranberry Beach road. A man—don’t know who, because he wore a mask—near killed Mrs. Bronson. This was along about sundown; she only managed to get word through to Allworth half an hour ago. Her husband, Elmer Bronson, was down at the beach, a mile away, floating off that big sloop of his. High tide tonight, and he’s been putting in some new strakes and painting her up. So the Bronson woman was all alone. Well, this stranger, he knocked on her door and asked for a drink of water. Soon as she opened the door and see he was masked, she tried to shut it in his face, but he was too quick for her. Set his foot in the opening and pushed on through. Then seems as if he struck her with something heavy; she was too upset to remember much of anything about it. Next thing she knew, she was trussed up hand and foot, and gagged with an old towel, and laying in her bathtub.
“The Bronsons had new plumbing put in only last summer. Mighty proud of their bathroom; there’s only two others in Fast Harbor! Well, that devil wasn’t satisfied with knockin’ her senseless, and then going through all her closets and bureaus and stealing what little money and jewelry he could find, but he’d left her helpless in the tub, flat on her back, and turned on the cold water faucet. He’d put in the plug, and when she come to the water had already riz high enough to reach her shoulders. It was only a matter of minutes when it’d reach her mouth and nose and drowned her! Somehow, she herself don’t know how she done it, she managed to work herself loose, just in time, and set up. Then she fainted; and when she came to again, the tub was full and runnin’ over. She says it’s gone through the floor and spoiled the kitchen ceiling,” finished Neighbor Hodge, with an anticlimax of which he was unconscious.
“Haven’t they any idea who did it?” asked Weston, his teeth chattering a little. “Seems as if she’d recognize something familiar about the assailant. You all must know one another pretty well around here!”
“She’s sure he don’t belong in these parts,” Hodge said. “And so far he hasn’t been caught up with. Of course, they’re out looking for him. Tomorrow soon as it gits light enough, they’ll try to track him. But anyhow, he’s got clear away. Bronson come home about an hour after his wife got herself free, and he telephoned right to the sheriff in Allsworth, and it was him notified me. And I dressed myself and come right on over to warn ye folks. It ain’t likely he’ll trouble you none; but you never can tell. Crazy, I says. No professional burglar would bother to do such a thing, when the woman was already helpless and he’d got all there was lying loose. Took about eleven dollars, and Mrs. Bronson’s best silver spoons and forks, and a string of gold beads that belonged to her grandmother. That’s all they’ve missed, so far.”
Jason Hodge turned aside, as if to go. Weston recollected himself, and stepped to one side. “Won’t you come in, and let my wife make you a cup of tea or something? I’m sure we are very grateful to you, and sorry for your trouble!”
Hodge shook his head. “Nope. Never drink tea late at night, much obliged. And as for the trouble, we folks out in the country always aim to be neighborly. Not like the city, where I’ve heard it said the dwellers in the same tenements live on for years without even having a bowing acquaintance, nor ’tending one another’s funerals! We ain’t like that, down here. Only a few of us, and we try to act human.”
Weston laughed. “That slam was deserved, I guess, Mr. Hodge! We do get sort of inhuman in the big cities. But that’s partly because families are always coming and going; and in emergencies there are always policemen and doctors to be had at a moment’s notice. But I certainly do thank you, and I’ll sleep with one eye open. If I can help track down the robber tomorrow, call on me! I want to do my share, too.”
Hodge was already moving down the path toward the gate. He turned and spoke over his shoulder. “Guess it’ll take somebody who can read signs to do that, mister! Somebody that knows the woods. A man could hide out for weeks in these deep cedar swamps. Pretty thinly settled! But we’ll root the varmint out, if he’s anywheres about. And when we ketch him, he’ll be lucky if he ever lives to be tried!”
A moment later the gate clicked in the darkness, and Weston rebolted his door. He also went over the rooms on the lower floor, closed and locked each window. He had bolted his door through sheer habit; all the windows had been left open, for the fresh air. They were screened against mosquitoes, but otherwise unprotected. He turned and mounted the stairs, to find Annie standing shivering on the top landing.
“How perfectly awful!” she exclaimed, “I heard all he said. And we supposed that up here we’d get away from all the lawlessness and assaults and murders and things our city papers are full of! I didn’t dream any worse crime was ever heard of up here in this lovely country than the theft of a watermelon, or the bootlegging of a little hard cider by some thrifty farmer! Oh, Frank, I don’t believe I’m going to like it here. Let’s go to some civilized resort, and give up our rental here!”
Weston put a reassuring arm across her shoulder and gently urged her back to her room.
“Shucks! Wait till tomorrow, and see how different you feel in the bright sunshine. I don’t believe there are any dangerous people living within twenty miles of us. This was the act of some tramp crazy with hooch, or dope. They’ll catch him; and nothing exciting will happen here again for fifty years more. But isn’t it queer that this should occur the very night we arrived to enjoy the simple life!”
Contrary to their expectations, both fell asleep within fifteen minutes, nor were they troubled with bad dreams. They were roused only when Romeo, the bobtailed cat, scandalized at the idea of lying abed after the sun was up, perched on Weston’s pillow and patted his face with imperative paws. He opened his eyes, grinned, and called out to Annie that it was a grand morning, and that he could do with a bit of breakfast!
As Weston had prophesied, his wife felt differently about their new home in the bright morning sunshine. Robins and bluebirds were singing, and selecting home sites. Down on the shore, crows were strutting up and down, their sharp beaks attacking periwinkles and mussels. The island of Mt. Desert stood out so clearly that one could make out automobiles crawling up its steep mountain roads. In the lilac bush at the corner of the kitchen, a peabody bird lighted and uttered its joyous song, which our northern cousins insist is a repetition of the word: “Canada.”
Annie sang too, as she wrestled with coffee, ham and eggs and toast, all at one time on her stove aflame with seasoned kindling. Frank surveyed his bristly chin in the mirror of his bureau, grinned, and decided not to shave that day. That was one of the petty tyrannies he had come up here to escape! No, and he wouldn’t wear any necktie, either. Just a flannel shirt open at the neck, the new corduroy trousers, and on his feet a pair of easy buckskin shoes. Bareheaded, he would wander about and get the lay of the land after breakfast. He too sang, discordantly, but none the less happily.
But before breakfast was fairly over, they had a caller, two of them, in fact; one remained outside, at the wheel of the stanch old touring car. The other, a determined-looking man with a square chin and sea-blue eyes, a man in his vigorous fifties and wearing loose blue serge and a slouch hat, knocked at the door. By daylight, there was nothing ominous about this knocking; it didn’t seem nearly as loud as the summons of Jason Hodge in the blackness of night.
He nodded at Frank as he answered the door, a piece of buttered toast in one hand and toast crumbs sprinkling his flannel shirt.
“Mr. Weston? From New York? Thought so. I’m Thomas, Joe Thomas from Allsworth—sheriff. Suppose you’ve heard about what happened last night?”
“Hodge came over to tell me,” Weston said. “He knew we have no telephone. Won’t you come in, Mr. Thomas? We can rustle up a cup of hot coffee—”
The sheriff interrupted him with a gesture of one hand.
“Much obliged; but this is my busy day. What time did Jason tell you about what happened at Bronson’s place?”
“Why—I don’t know exactly; I think I’d just fallen asleep, and we retired about ten o’clock. Couldn’t have been much later than ten thirty.”
“Then you really don’t know what all could have taken place afterward.”
“Why, no. We locked up tight, and then went to sleep again; and you’re the first one I’ve seen since I talked with Hodge.”
The sheriff nodded. “Just so. Well, there was another outrage along toward three o’clock. Same fellow, apparently; anyhow he was masked, and he had plenty of time to walk over to old man Tucker’s cabin. That’s beyond Cranberry Beach a few miles; nearest neighbor is a mile away. Tucker has always had the reputation of being a miser. I don’t know why; I doubt if he’s got ten dollars to his name. But anyhow, this bandit—whoever it was—broke into his shack, woke up the old man and tried to make him tell where his money was hid. Didn’t get nothing out of him. Not even when he tied him up and held lighted matches to the soles of his feet and did other devilish things I haven’t time to go into now. He left along about half past four, as well as Tucker can figure out. The poor old codger is in a bad way. They took him over to Allsworth, to the hospital. He’s hurt, some; but the shock to his nerves is worse, the doctors say. So, you see Hodge’s warning isn’t one to be taken lightly.”
Weston was genuinely shocked. Coming as he had from a city where atrocious crimes were the familiar headlines of his breakfast paper, he had expected to forget such things in the peaceful country of scattered farms, deep woods, and majestic ocean. They seemed worse, somehow, these brutal assaults, than they had back home. They seemed to desecrate the loveliness of nature; to make the bird songs and the fleecy clouds and warm sunshine a mockery.
He was seeking to find some expression of his feelings when Thomas spoke again.
“Just you and your wife here? So I understood. And you got in—when?”
“Yesterday, about four o’clock. Jed Hooper drove us over from Cherryville Junction in his car. We came up on the Down-Easter through train from New York.”
“Strangers here, I take it? How’d you come to learn about the place?”
Weston smiled. “I picked out about the location we desired, on a road map. Then I wrote the postmaster at Cherryville, and he sent me a number of names; Hooper’s was among them. So then I wrote him, and from his description I engaged the Jarvis house.”
He looked the sheriff steadily and a trifle quizzically in the eyes. “I guess you’re asking me to establish a sort of alibi, Mr. Thomas?”
The sheriff reddened slightly, then laughed. “There isn’t a chance in the world that you had anything to do with these two affairs, Weston. But one of the things I have to do is check up on every man, woman and grown child who lives hereabout and could by any chance, however remote, have been to the Bronson and Tucker places last night. That’s dry detail; but it has to be attended to, or I’ll get what-for from the district attorney!”
He turned to go; then paused for a final word.
“Don’t let this fret you and the missus too much. We’re bound to get that murdering dog. I’ve got men that know every mile of this district like it was their own woodpile. Besides which, the roads will be patrolled. I’m swearing in deputies today. You’ll see some of ’em before sundown. And if you hear or see anything suspicious, no matter how trivial it seems to you, be sure to notify one of my men right off. G’bye!”
Weston watched until he swung himself into the waiting car, and was driven rapidly down the sandy road towards Hooper’s place.
“That was the sheriff,” he explained to Annie when he returned to the kitchen for a final cup of coffee. “There was another holdup last night—an old man miles away up the beach somewhere. Nobody was killed or seriously hurt. And before night there’ll be someone on guard along the highway. If they don’t catch the fellow, they’ll at least make it too dangerous for him to attempt anything further around here.”
Annie tried to believe him; her common sense argued that he was right. But somehow, the warmth seemed to have gone from the sunshine. And the birds seemed to have stopped their song, this was natural enough, as their early chorus was over, and they were busy about their affairs. Only Romeo, the bobtailed cat, seemed oblivions of the dark cloud that had descended over the peaceful little hamlet of Fast Harbor. Promptly after he had lapped up his saucer of warm milk, he wandered forth to investigate the life and habits of the field mouse, as found in his dooryard.
When Weston would have imitated his cat to the extent of strolling away from the house, Annie entered a terrified protest.
“Where are you going with that pail, Frank?” she cried. To his reply that he was thinking of going down to the beach which lay just beyond a clump of cedars, to see if he could dig some clams, she objected: “But there’s nearly a peck of clams from those Mr. Hooper left here for us!”
He hesitated, glancing longingly at the short iron clam hook in his hand, “Well, I thought it would be rather good fun. And they will keep indefinitely, if I leave a little water in the pail and sprinkle some corn meal over them. I read that in a newspaper.”
Annie’s voice was a little sharp with terror as she answered him. “Yes, and first thing you know, you’ll be reading in a newspaper that Mrs. Frank Weston was found murdered in her summer camp, while her husband was amusing himself on the shore!”
Half vexed and half amused, he yielded. “If I’ve got to stick around the dooryard all the time, we might as well pull stakes a
nd go to a hotel. One reason for coming up here was to get a lot of exercise and fresh air! If you’re worried, and I don’t wonder, why not put on your old shoes and come along with me?”
She shook her head, “No; I’ve got my housework to attend to. Beds to make, dinner to get started. Of course we’ll take walks all about the country together; but not right after breakfast. You said there’d be some guards posted nearby, didn’t you?”
“So the sheriff promised. All right, then. I’ll wait till they show up before I go out of sight of the house.”
He reluctantly set down his pail and clam hook, and pottered about the rough dooryard, pulling clumps of weeds, removing loose stones from the driveway, working up an appetite by splitting some kindling, although Jed Hooper had prepared a generous supply of fuel in advance of their coming.
The day dragged monotonously. Weston missed his daily papers and the mail he always looked over before going to his office. He hated to admit it, but he even missed the noise and bustle of the city, the throbbing of industry and pleasure and all that went to make up the ordered confusion of a metropolis. Nobody passed the house; lacking a telephone, he could not call up to inquire what progress, if any, had been made toward capturing the murderous unknown.
But directly after dinner, which they ate in an abstracted silence, big Jason Hodge appeared. He was leading a miserable-looking cur, whose pedigree would have puzzled a dog fancier. He hailed Weston with rough cordiality.
“Brought ye a watchdog! He ain’t much to look at, but he sure does make a row if he hears anybody prowling about the house. Thought the missus would feel easier at night with him tied up outside. If you don’t hear Tige yellin’, you can rest easy there’s nobody sneaking up on ye in the dark. Keep him till we’ve caught the miscreant.”
The Mystery Megapack: 25 Modern and Classic Mystery Stories Page 29